Heather Exner-Perrault is a senior fellow with the McLennan Laurier Institute and Director of Energy, Natural Resources and Environment. She was in Calgary at the Global Energy Show, a conference that covers everything from oil, gas and petrochemicals.
00:00:59.260I would have really liked to be here, like, 60 years ago, when it's just, like, a couple of roughnecks or something, showing off their new pump jacks.
00:02:46.780You know, certainly people have optimism about what he's saying and doing.
00:02:50.340And to his credit, he has been to Alberta, Saskatchewan, BC, Winnipeg, at least.
00:02:56.820Anyway, so he's making the rounds in Western Canada and putting his, you know, talking about, talking and saying the right things.
00:03:02.060Anyway, so I don't know if it was a scheduling issue or because they're trying to push through C5 before the summer sitting or that kind of thing.
00:03:24.140Do you want to speak to political to speculate about why?
00:03:27.200Well, I'll say, you know, Wilkinson came to the World Petroleum Congress when it was held in Calgary and gave a speech that hit, like, a lead balloon.
00:03:34.480So maybe there wasn't too much pressure, you know.
00:05:00.880Well, I mean, trust needs to be built, for sure.
00:05:04.260But I would say there's cautious optimism.
00:05:06.100You know, I think if you were to say a year ago and tell us, you know, that a liberal prime minister would be saying we need to be an energy superpower.
00:05:13.020That a liberal minister of energy would say we need to build big things.
00:05:16.880And as a partner and is coming to Calgary, you know, with very reciprocal energy.
00:05:23.740I think we would have been surprised and we would have been pleased.
00:05:26.060So I'm willing, you know, it's only been six weeks they've been in power.
00:05:29.000Certainly willing to try that honeymoon period.
00:05:31.040And to see that, you know, what they're saying, can they translate that into implementation.
00:05:34.280I'd say Hodgson and Kearney in particular very recently came from the private sector and know what that actually means.
00:05:40.440And knows when they're saying that they're promising big things.
00:05:42.600They know what that actually needs to look like on the ground.
00:05:45.360But at some point, the honeymoon will be over.
00:05:48.240At some point, some of the easier policy changes they could make will need to be made or people will start to be skeptical.
00:05:54.380So I think at least until the fall, there will be a honeymoon.
00:05:57.540And after that, we'll need to see some results.
00:05:59.820So you said the magic word or two words there, energy superpower.
00:06:03.120That term, I think, was first started to be used by Stephen Harper.
00:06:09.220And by energy superpower, he generally meant it to mean Alberta and Saskatchewan, oil and gas, you know, plus Newfoundland offshore, et cetera.
00:06:15.780But we meant it as pretty much conventional and non-conventional oil and gas.
00:06:21.360Mark Carney has, though, started to say it.
00:06:25.260Well, Pierre Polyev had been saying it.
00:06:27.180Mark Carney started to use this verbiage.
00:06:29.500And he is a bit more ambiguous about it.
00:06:34.440Sometimes he would elaborate and say renewable and conventional.
00:06:38.660He has, I think, proven to be a surprisingly good political communicator in saying things that avoid pissing off the broad mass of people.
00:06:52.940But eventually, he will have to make decisions that will piss off people.
00:06:57.480Because generally, you can't satisfy both groups at the same time.
00:08:51.820So he may have to speak, you know, in vaguer terms.
00:08:55.680But at the end of the day, if we're not getting more oil and gas and critical minerals to our allies,
00:09:00.140then we're not acting like a superpower.
00:09:02.040And in fact, we're letting them down because they actually need those things right now.
00:09:05.260I mean, we've got larger proven oil and gas reserves than Russia.
00:09:10.380But Russia is able to, it's not just purely dollars and cents, but they use it for exerting their influence on a geopolitical level.
00:09:20.220That's how they are able to keep Germany from going completely hostile against them.
00:09:26.820That was definitely part of the dynamic, absolutely.
00:09:30.060Yeah, there was a reason that the United States or Ukraine blew up Nord Stream because it wanted to sever that relationship between Germany and Russia.
00:09:41.060Because Russia is very successful at energy politics.
00:09:43.880Because hypothetically, if Canada had been more aggressive in building our energy export infrastructure,
00:09:52.920the United States would have had to think twice about screwing with us because we would be able to retaliate.
00:09:58.600Not that I'm actually in favour of using Alberta's resources to save Ontario and Quebec after the way we'd been treated for so long.
00:10:05.460But the United States would at least think twice about it if we had been perhaps more strategic in building ourselves up into an energy superpower.
00:10:24.420So obviously, you know, we allowed ourselves to be a junior partner in this regional context when we had the resources and frankly the experts of a global player.
00:10:49.700But, you know, again, when our, you know, our allies actually need it.
00:10:54.740We were looking at shale probably production peaking.
00:10:57.260Even the EIA for the first time today I saw actually predicted 2026 shale peak.
00:11:02.620I think it'll probably come before that.
00:11:04.640But think in 10 years from now in a context where American oil production has declined, when we see that global demand and global population is still increasing.
00:11:12.960And which is the democracy that is going to be filling some of that global demand?
00:11:16.600It can't just be that OPEC and Russia just get more and more market share.